In case of emergency
by Madeline Mulligan
I missed the signs. The strange way the dog seemed to pace across the floors, how the birds that dwell in the woods around the house were quieter than usual. Animals always know somehow, stealing glimpses of future like breadcrumbs. I didn’t know until I saw the childhood photographs charred and wilting like September flowers. I never felt the heat at all.
I wonder if the ghosts in the basement tried to warn me, if they have moved on now that there is no house to haunt, if they will push soot around forever. I want to ask if they saw the cracks in the foundation, running back west to Kentucky, splintering north past Lake Ontario. I remember when I was young my mother instructed me to leave my stuffed bunny on the bed at the first sign of smoke, to crawl out of the second-floor window, to wait on the roof or bend my knees before I jump so I wouldn’t break as many bones.
Every day in this house was disaster. Stories of broken bodies, loss and resurrection revolving like the bullets in my grandfather’s gun. My father would say we are the hands of change, we are the scalpel. I should know how to break through a chrysalis, how to fly away from danger, how to adapt and be the phoenix, how to live in a city on fire and hide the withered matches in my pockets. But chaos and destruction don’t bring noise, they bring silence, crushing and all-consuming, settling over everything like the ash. I never know what to say. I only wonder why death looked me in the face and averted his eyes.